Thank you for this feedback. I think it’s reasonable to worry about tying CouchDB to FoundationDB for some of the reasons you mentioned, but not all of them. We did worry, at the start, at the lack of a governance policy around FoundationDB; something that would help ensure the project is not beholden to a single corporate entity that might abandon the project or take it in places that make it unsuitable for CouchDB in the future. There hasn’t been much progress on that, but likewise the project has stayed true to form.
CouchDB is critically dependent on Erlang/OTP, among other components, which similarly lack the kind of governance or oversight that Apache projects themselves work within. At no point have I feared the "project will end up in FoundationDB integrating CouchDB rather than the other way around”. FoundationDB is not a database, it is explicitly only foundational support to build databases on top of. "If even you guys weren't treated as a priority, I doubt that my feature requests and other input will matter even one bit as a user.” - I’m not sure who you refer to with “you guys”, but I remind everyone that the CouchDB contributors from IBM Cloudant are the main contributors to CouchDB 2.0 and 3.0, have been so for years and are in, many cases, either CouchDB committers or PMC members. They are “us” as much as any other contributor. That the Cloudant team has moved focus from CouchDB 4.0 (as it would have been) to 3.0 is a re-establishment of the status quo ante. "I doubt that my feature requests and other input will matter even one bit as a user.” — I strongly disagree here. Community contributions are hugely valuable and valued, the rewrite of the lower layers of CouchDB would not have changed that significantly. CouchDB-FDB is still written in Erlang, the http layer is largely the same code as before. The parts that interact with FoundationDB are confined to a single library application (erlfdb) which exposes the C language bindings as Erlang functions and data structures. Unless you are working at that level you can mostly ignore it. Finally, while I don’t think we’ve explicitly described it this way, CouchDB-FDB effectively _is_ a “layer” on top of FDB in the same sense that their “document layer” (which is mongo-like) is. B. > On 13 Mar 2022, at 11:17, Reddy B. <redd...@live.fr> wrote: > > Hello! > > Thanks a lot for this update and overview of the situation. As users (our > company has been using couchdb since 2015 circa as the main database of our 3 > tier web apps), I feel it may be preferable to move the couchdb-fdb work to a > separate project having a different name. As Janh has mentioned, the > internals and daily management of FDB may with certain regards be at odds > with the philosophy and user experience that couchdb wants to provide. > > Moving this effort to a different project would give people interested in > this effort more flexibility to introduce breaking changes and limitations > taking full advantage of the philosophy of FDB. I feel the idea that: if you > have outscaled CouchDB, move to couchdb-fdb (or another more specialized DB) > is the right idea. Couchdb-fdb advantage compared to alternative would simply > be that it implements both the replication protocol and the HTTP API. > > This project may/should even "simply" become something under the umbrella of > the FoundationDB layer similar to the MongoDB-compatible document layer of > FoundationDB [1]. > > And this fact is also the cause of the unease I personally have this > FoundationDB migration: it looks like CouchDB will have much less control > over its destiny and even philosophy. This is different from say an encrypted > messaging app deciding to replace its home-made encryption with an > established and more robust open-source solution. From day 1, I feel like > this project will end up in FoundationDB integrating CouchDB rather than the > other way around. I even suspected that maybe the dev team was no longer > interested in CouchDB and wanted to find it a new home. > > My friendly feedback as a user is that I trust the Apache governance model > much more than I trust Apple, especially when the welcome meal they have > offer me is that features will be removed and limitations introduced. The > political background and what I would call "corporate risk" (key capabilities > not implemented by upstream, change in priority or vision, difficulty to > affect the roadmap of upstream etc...), is also a key factor when choosing a > DB solution as a user. > > If even you guys weren't treated as a priority, I doubt that my feature > requests and other input will matter even one bit as a user. And I would have > zero chance of having the expertize required to modify the FDB core myself > and get my changes approved to make my CouchDB Layer- related request > possible. While right now I get can get my hands dirty and eventually get > something done if I really want to. The governance here is very friendly, > welcoming and inspiring trust. > > So to summarize, I feel that to realize the full potential of this vision > rather than settling on compromises not satisfying anyone, it may be better > to treat it as a separate project and let CouchDB remain CouchDB. I also feel > that the project would lose too much control and sovereignty with such a > migration, especially in light of the facts reported. > > The scaling challenges and limitations that motivated this effort may > probably be addressed differently with a fresh outlook. For example, > nowadays, there are even application-level middleware libraries like > Microsoft Orleans being able to coordinate ACID distributed transactions from > the application layer. My point is, challenges may be able to be overcome > overtime by approaching things in a creative manner. > > Users may be able to workaround some of them by adjusting the topology of > their clusters (using single writer, huge single node with distributed file > systems etc...), for other challenges application-layer solutions may exist, > or the solution may simply be shipping extremely user friendly graphical > management tools making for example things such as conflict resolution a > breeze for the admin. > > My 2 cents > > [1]: https://github.com/FoundationDB/fdb-document-layer > > > > 12 mars 2022 10:26:35 Jan Lehnardt <j...@apache.org>: > >> Thanks Bob for passing this along. >> >> I’m looking forward to renewed interest in the 3.x codebase :) >> >> For our 4.x plans, we’ll have to discuss here what we want to do with it and >> I’m looking at everyone for input here. Even if you’ve never spoken up on >> this list before, I’d lie to hear from you. >> >> * * * >> >> First off, as a project, CouchDB is not obliged to follow IBMs lead and >> abandon the FDB-CouchDB effort. At the same time, it is not obliged to take >> what they leave behind and finish it. >> >> I know for some the 4.x release is highly anticipated and we as a project >> hoped to make a generational jump for our underlying storage and >> distribution technologies. During initial discussions about FDB-Couch and >> during its development, we anticipated certain developments on the FDB side >> (especially allowing longer transactions for consistent _changes responses >> with their new Redwood storage engine). It is my understanding that these >> developments have not materialised in the way we would like them. The >> consequence is that there are certain API guarantees that 3.x CouchDB gives >> (consistent full-database snapshots in _changes) are not possible to build >> with native FDB features. — I can’t speak to the very specifics of this, and >> I hope we can dig into all this together in this thread, but my takeaway >> from this is that *if* we continue with FDB-Couch, I think we will have to >> reevaluate its compatibility story, as we had hoped to make it mainly a >> seamless (but better) API upgrade from 3.x. >> >> We also learned that operating a FDB cluster is a significant effort that >> somewhat goes against CouchDB’s mostly “just works” nature. We had asked the >> IBM team to share their operational FDB learnings with the CoucHDB project, >> so we can build up community knowledge around this, but this has not >> materialised either. >> >> I’m personally still excited about the opportunities we have with FDB-Couch, >> but as a project, we might have to come up with a more realistic positioning >> of FDB-CouchDB. Less a “new and improved drop-in replacement” and maybe more >> a “if you exceed the scale/capacity of 3.x CouchDB, you can upgrade to >> FDB-CouchDB at the expense of a few API differences and higher operational >> cost”. This might be worth a trade-off for large users of CouchDB and thus >> it might be worth having both of these codebases live alongside each other. >> >> However, that comes with a number of consequences: >> >> - The 3.x/4.x naming doesn’t quite work if these are meant to continue >> alongside each other. >> >> - Maybe FDB-Couch gets its own separate project name and versioning, with a >> clear delineation between them. >> >> - We would have to maintain two projects complete with release management, >> vulnerability management, the lot. At the moment, CouchDB has just about >> enough folks contributing to move forward at a reasonable pace. Doubling >> that effort might be tricky. While we had an influx of contributors >> recently, this would probably need more dedicated planning and outreach. >> >> - New API features would have to be implemented twice, if we want to keep a >> majority API overlap. This is not a fun proposition for folks who add >> features, which is hard enough, but now they have to do it twice, onto two >> different subsystems. Some features (say multi-doc-transactions) would only >> be possible in one of the projects (FDB-Couch), what would our policy be for >> deliberate API feature divergence? >> >> - probably more that elude me at the moment. >> >> While there are non-trivial points among these, they are not impossible >> tasks *if* we find enough and the right folks to carry the work forward. >> >> * * * >> >> For myself, I still see a lot of potential in the 3.x codebase and I’m >> looking forward to renewed roadmap discussions there. I know I have a long >> list of things I’d like to see added. >> >> From my professional observation, the thing that our (Neighbourhoodie) >> customers tend to run into the most is the scaling limits of the >> database-per-user pattern. We have a proposal for per-doc-authentication >> that helps mitigate a subset of those use-cases, which would be a great help >> overall. I have worked on a draft PR of this over the years, but it mostly >> stalled out during the pandemic. I’m planning to restart work on this >> shortly. If anyone wants to contribute with time and/or money, please do get >> in touch. >> >> The other major issue with 3.x as reported by IBM is _changes feed rewinds >> when nodes are rotated in and out of clusters. We already fixed a number of >> changes rewind bugs relatively recently. I don’t know if we got them all >> now, or if there are theoretical limits to how far we can take this given >> our consistency model, but it’d be worth spending some time on at least >> getting rid of all rewind-to-zero cases. >> >> * * * >> >> I’m also looking forward to all your input on the discussion here. I’m sure >> this will explode into a lot of detailed discussions quickly, so maybe as a >> guide to come back to when get closer to having to make a decision, here are >> three ways forward that I see: >> >> 1. Follow IBM in abandoning FDB-Couch, refocus all effort on Erlang-Couch >> (3.x). >> >> 2. Take FDB-Couch development over fully, come up with a story for how >> FDB-Couch and Erlang-Couch can coexist and when users should choose which >> one. >> >> 3. Hand over the FDB-Couch codebase to an independent team that then can do >> what they like with it (if this materialises from this discussion). >> >> * * * >> >> Best >> Jan >> — >> >> >>> On 10. Mar 2022, at 17:24, Robert Newson <rnew...@apache.org> wrote: >>> >>> Hi, >>> >>> For those that are following closely, and particularly those that build or >>> use CouchDB from our git repo, you'll be aware that CouchDB embarked on an >>> attempt to build a next-generation version of CouchDB using the >>> FoundationDB database engine as its new base. >>> >>> The principal sponsors of this work, the Cloudant team at IBM, have >>> informed us that, unfortunately, they will not be continuing to fund the >>> development of this version and are refocusing their efforts on CouchDB 3.x. >>> >>> Cloudant developers will continue to contribute as they always have done >>> and the CouchDB PMC thanks them for their efforts. >>> >>> As the Project Management Committee for the CouchDB project, we are now >>> asking the developer community how we’d like to proceed in light of this >>> new information. >>> >>> Regards, >>> Robert Newson >>> Apache CouchDB PMC >>>
